Category: Philosophy
The next generation of conservative (broadly) thinkers
Who are the up-and-comings? Drake Bennett has the answers. He covers Luigi Zingales, W. Bradford Wilcox, Megan McArdle, and Reihan Salam.
*Realizing Freedom*
That's the title of the new Tom Palmer book and the subtitle is apt: Libertarian Theory, History, and Practice. It delivers what it promises plus the very short essays (Iraq, gay pride in Moscow) are quite interesting. I view this book as defining one of the main threads in modern libertarian thought:
1. Cato-influenced (for lack of a better word). There is an orthodox reading of what "being libertarian" means, defined by the troika of free markets, non-interventionism, and civil liberties. It is based on individual rights but does not insist on anarchism. A ruling principle is that libertarians should not endorse state interventions. I read Palmer's book as belonging to this tradition, broadly speaking.
2. Rothbardian anarchism. Free-market protection agencies will replace government-as-we-know-it. War is evil and the problems of anarchy pale in comparison. David Friedman offered a more utilitarian-sounding version of this approach, shorn of Misesian influence.
3. Mises Institute nationalism. Gold standard, a priori reasoning, monetary apocalypse, and suspicious of immigration because maybe private landowners would not have let those people into their living rooms.
4. Jeff Friedman and Critical Review: Everything is up for grabs, let's be consequentialists and focus on the welfare state because that's where the action is. Marx is dead. The case for some version of libertarianism ultimately rests upon voter ignorance and, dare I say it, voter irrationality.
5. "Hayek libertarianism." All or most of the great libertarian thinkers are ultimately compatible with each other and we have a big tent of all sorts of classical liberal ideas. Hayek and Friedman are the chosen "public faces" of this approach. "There's a classical liberal tradition and classical liberal values and we can be fuzzy on a lot of other things."
What am I leaving out? And which will win out as the dominant strand?
Trolley problems and experimental ethics
A second experiment developed this idea and showed further that an
action is most morally condemnable when personal force and intention
co-occur. Students judged as most morally unacceptable a situation in
which Joe deliberately pushed a victim off a bridge so that he could
reach a switch to save five others. By contrast, if the victim was
knocked off the bridge accidentally so Joe could reach the switch, or
if Joe killed him by diverting a trolley with a switch, then the
students' moral judgements were not so harsh.
"Put simply,
something special happens when intention and personal force co-occur,"
the researchers said. This prompts many further questions, such as what
counts as personal force. "Must it be continuous (as in pushing), or
may it be ballistic (as in throwing)?" the researchers asked. "Is
pulling the same as pushing?"
Here is more.
What is transhumanism?
Kyle Munkittrick writes to me and sets out what it would mean for transhumanism to arrive or succeed:
…Transhumanism is definitely more of a philosophy than
an objective, though it is a political philosophy like feminism or
libertarianism. There are specific goals, like extending life span,
creating true A.I., and animal uplift, and then broad ethical goals,
like ending suffering.
If I had to come up with specific criteria, however, I'd suggest the following three:
1.
Medical modifications that permanently alter or replace a function of
the human body become prolific. LAZIK eye surgery, internal
defibrillators, and prosthetic limbs are all examples. The key
difference is that these modifications would either result in a return
to initial quality (as in LAZIK) or enhance/augment the original
condition. Landmark moment: When a runner with prosthetic cheetah
blades competes in the traditional Olympics and wins a medal.
2. Our social understanding of aging loses the "virtue of
necessity" aspect and society begins to treat aging as a disease.
Concepts like "aging well" and "golden years" would be as
counter-intuitive as describing someone with cancer or MS as "diseasing
well." I have no idea what the consequences would be socially, but you
can bet things like "mid-life crises" and "adult learning" would take
on entirely new meanings or become meaningless. When we have a
generation of people expected to live to 150, that'll be a good sign
this is on the way to happening.
3. The recognition of an individual with citizenship and/or
personhood and the criteria for that recognition would change
dramatically from the status quo. Rights discourse would shift from who
we include (i.e. should homosexual have marriage rights?) to a system
flexible enough to easily bring in sentient non-humans. A good litmus
test for flexibility is: how would we incorporate an intelligent alien
race into our rights/ethics system?
Those are the three landmarks I'd look for when trying to answer
that question…I'm a big fan of MR, so it prides me
to see transhumanism as a topic you've enough interest in to mention.
Advocates, is that a good account?
I'm not a Luddite (at all) but I've never been taken by transhumanism as a systematic philosophy. I'm more worried that we will fail at "humanism," namely the simple requirement that we treat other people decently. It's worth asking whether the promotion of transhumanism makes us more or less likely to meet basic canons of decency and consideration. I would be more likely to favor a transhumanism that made us painfully aware of our personal vulnerability in a way that would expand our circle of benevolence. I worry that transhumanism can be used to cloak that vulnerability, assert its contingency, and instill a false sense of personal control or denial.
Was Michael Jackson a transhumanist (cut to 3:54)?
Questions I have been asked lately
What are the exact conditions for counting "transhumanism" as having been attained? Would you rather have a worse trip with better memories, or a more fun trip with fewer memories? Why do some Senators act so obnoxiously to their subordinates? Why don't more people from Hollywood go into politics? From here on in, what is the best case scenario for your life? Does it increase the productivity of a man if he marries a very religious woman? If so, through what mechanism? If China starts first with explicit genetic engineering, does that make it more or less likely that the U.S. will follow suit? What does the presence of affirmative action in U.S. universities signal to foreigners? What effects does the strategy of "male neuroticism" have on a marriage? Will you become a "granite slave"?
Why U.S. health care policy is especially egalitarian
The "poorest" people are not those with low incomes but rather those with low human capital endowments. That includes the elderly because, even if they are very talented, on average they will die sooner. A typical 23-year-old lower-middle-class immigrant has a higher real endowment than does Warren Buffett.
Through Medicare, the U.S. government subsidizes the health care of the elderly. Given the embedded incentives in the system, the subsidy is especially large for people in the last year of life or so, namely the very poorest.
Western European welfare states may be more efficient, because they do more to expand routine health care access for the relatively young and this may have a higher rate of return. But those same systems are in critical regards less egalitarian. Bravo to them.
Many people do not look at the contrast this way. They wish to think they believe in egalitarianism, they wish to be skeptical of the United States, they wish to condemn the U.S. for its inequality, and they wish to raise the relative status of people who are not very successful under capitalism. When you put all those wishes together, those people will be deeply allergic to my argument.
A few of these people also confuse "high social status" with "well off." Since old, high-bank-account white males have lots of social status and power, these onlookers cannot bring themselves to regard those males as holding very poor overall endowments. They substitute in assessments of social status for assessments of absolute endowments (another sign of the claim that "politics is not about policy" but rather it is about whom we should admire and condemn).
I am amazed (but not surprised) by how frequently people think of egalitarianism in terms of social markers of status rather than actual forward-looking endowments.
It is common for more egalitarian policies to be less efficient.
From the comments: "Let us say you are a twenty three year old immigrant living in New York. Would you want to trade places with Warren Buffett?
My answer is this- you couldn't pay me enough to make the trade."
Claims I wish I understood better
This is from the July/August issue of Discover magazine:
Hawking is now pushing a different strategy, which he calls top-down cosmology. It is not the case, he says, that the past uniquely determines the present. Because the universe has many possible histories and just as many possible beginnings, the present state of the universe selects the past. "This means that the histories of the Universe depend on what is being measured," Hawking wrote in a recent paper, "contrary to the usual idea that the Universe has an objective, observer-independent history."…Hawking's idea provides a natural context for string theory. All those universes might simply represent different possible histories of our universe.
Shop Class as Soulcraft
This book grows out of an attempt to understand the greater sense of agency and competence I have always felt doing manual work, compared to other jobs that were officially recognized as "knowledge work." Perhaps most surprisingly, I often find manual work more engaging intellectually. This book is an attempt to understand why this should be so.
That's from Matthew B. Crawford, who has a Ph.d. in political philosophy from the University of Chicago yet now runs a motorcycle repair shop in Richmond. I would cite shooting baskets, walking, and cooking as three of my analogous "intellectual" activities.
Recommended.
Dialogue
Is it wrong to buy sex?
The Intelligence Squared debate is now on YouTube. If you will recall, Lionel Tiger and the Mayflower Madam were on my side, against Wendy Shalit, Catherine Mackinnon, and Melissa Farley. They won and you will find Alex's interpretation here. A few observations:
1. Catherine Mackinnon's closer was I thought the single best speech in the debate.
2. I was very pleased to have met and chatted with Wendy Shalit, as we hit it off very well; you'll find her books here.
3. I believed throughout that it would hurt my side of the debate to suggest that men would enjoy the experience of buying sex; the sociology of that fact is itself interesting.
4. During Q&A I was asked whether a woman raped at a very young age can later be said to have exercised autonomous choice in her decision to become a prostitute. The premise of the question was "obviously not" but is it so simple? Does everyone who was once a helpless victim, in a terrible way, lose autonomy? The implications of that world view frighten me.
5. Legalization advocates still could use a better account of why this market, even when it is legal or quasi-legal, seems so prone to abuse.
The Education of the Stoic
"I am shy with women: therefore there is no God" is highly unconvincing metaphysics.
That's from Fernando Pessoa's book, written under the name of Baron of Teive.
The Erasmus Journal for Philosophy and Economics
Now on-line, find it here. There is plenty of talk of Colander, McCloskey, why economists appear to be more selfish, and whether history of economic thought is a legitimate endeavor, among other topics. I haven't had a chance to read through any of it.
I thank www.bookforum.com for the pointer.
Ben Casnocha asks about trust and infidelity
I believe Ben is slightly inconsistent:
In an earlier post I asked, Would you trust less a business partner who cheats on his/her spouse? Or do you completely separate personal and professional?
My answer is I would trust the person less in a business or corporate environment, but would still trust enough to maintain a relationship.
Here's a question for people like myself, people who do not strictly separate bedroom character from boardroom character:
Suppose that you were on an NBA team and you knew one of your
teammates was cheating on his wife. Would you trust him less on the
court? Trust is vitally important in basketball, just as it is
important in business.
My answer to this new scenario is no, I would not trust my point guard (who's cheating on his wife) any less on the court.
Some of his readers think that trust in a point guard is automatic but I say ha.
When it comes to trust, I suggest that compartmentalization is the best default assumption. The cynical view, which you will never find on this blog, is that the NBA example starkly illustrates that an unfaithful man is driven by opportunity, not by a differing basic inclination. Putting that aside, Hitler was supposedly nice to his dog and Nixon never cheated on his wife. This is one reason why I don't wish to condemn people when I observe what is possibly their intellectual dishonesty. Even if the person has questionable morals in public discourse, he or she still might be more likely to give his life in a foxhole or perform other noble acts.
Removed from context, it's very difficult to judge people as a whole.
My bloggingheads.tv with Peter Singer
Find it here. Not at all like my Bloggingheads with Robin ("but which Tyler will show up?").
There were two tough questions I didn't get to pose him but I had time for most of the rest.
The listed topics don't quite give the sense of it:
 |
Peter’s new book, “The Life You Can Save” (03:08)
What is the most effective way to end poverty? (06:45)
Genetically reprogramming humans to be more generous (05:35)
What charities does Peter give to? (06:27)
Advice for a young utilitarian (04:49)
How to achieve a higher happiness (03:17)
Read the comments on the site to get the flavor of the dialogue. Recommended viewing, definitely, and I don't just say that because of the participants.
Addendum: Buy Peter's book here.
Ross Douthat as a conservative on social policy
Brad DeLong cites some critics of Douthat on social policy, including on abortion, and (via Matt Y.) there is more here, from his college writings. This post, on eugenics, is one of Ross's most controversial (btw overall I like it). I am myself more libertarian than conservative but at the same time I am on Douthat's side in questioning the common presuppositions behind modern opinion. There is a presumption that liberal, tolerant people should have certain views on abortion, stem cell research, and other matters and I am happy to see Douthat breaking the mold. On these issues, the derivation of current liberal policy views from underlying liberal principles is in fact extremely tenuous, even if one views those conclusions as ultimately correct. I view the current alignment of stances on social policy as more of a sociological regularity ("look at how rotten are the people on the other side") then an intellectual necessity.
Take abortion. Let's say that the mainstream modern liberal understanding of when life begins is correct with p = 0.92. That's a pretty high p on a matter where so many intelligent people disagree so vehemently. Does such a "p" provide enough reason to follow through with modern liberal policy conclusions? That's far from obvious. In this debate you'll find lots of fury and very little willingness to apply stochastic reasoning to ethics. There are far too many smart people who offer lip service to the toughness of these questions and then simply go ahead and take sides.